Your favorite wave editor...and why?

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:23 am

I spent most of yesterday afternoon downloading and trying out quite a few wave editors, including:

(Blaze Audio)
RipEditBurn
Wave Creator
(Fleximusic)
Wave Editor
(Code-It Software)
Wave Editor
KISS
(NCH)
WavePad
(Audiophile Engineering)
Wave Editor
(Open Source)
Audacity
(Steingberg)
WaveLab
(Adobe)
Cool Edit

I was wanting to use one to isolate guitar riffs from some longish wav files, to build up a mini "sample library" to use in my bike grunge tune (creating a program in STS).

I didn't find any of the above to be to my liking (although I must confess that I haven't tried Audacity out yet). I found the UIs to be generally unintuitive and was constantly losing my place in the file with regards to the selected section which is pretty frustrating. In most I couldn't see how to manipulate selections and loops to suit my purpose and many didn't seem to have basic features like "snap to zero crossing".

In the end, I fired up computer #2 which was a Win98 installation on it and used Yamaha's Tiny Wave Editor (only '95 and '98 unfortunately) which makes the task described incredibly easy and intuitive. In a couple of hours I'd stripped out about 50+ neat samples from about 20 or so wave files, ready for importing into STS.

To date, this is still the only Wave Editor I've found which I can use in a straightforward, intuitive manner.

So, which editor do you use? (I'm especially interested in any which aren't listed above).

Royston

petal · Post by **petal** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:50 am

I've been using Cool Edit (Now Audition) for ages and have always liked it's interface and graphics style. I once tried out a few diffent waveeditors, but the graphics wasn't as pleasing to my eye as Cool Edit was/is.
And I know it has the function of finding zero-crossing - It actually has it's own button, a little to the left from the middle. The icon has a small z in it.´Or you can press "Shift + I".

I also like it's zoom function, where you use the mouse-wheel and the mouse position in order to choose the place you want to zoom in on or out from. It's very convenient, and was the first thing I noticed that I missed a lot when I tried out Audacity - actually I knew I quite quickly that I couldn't live without that function.

The new Audition 1.5 has a Marquee-Selecttion-tool that, when you are viewing your sound in spectral mode, lets you cut out small frequency-areas to manipulate as you like - Something which has prooved it self to be very handy and usefull.

I know you requested different waveeditors that weren't on your list, but something tells me that you maybe were in a hurry when you tried them out?

Anyways, I hope my post help you a little.

Cheers!
Thomas

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:28 am

Anyways, I hope my post help you a little.

Yeah, thanks. Are you using the 'Pro' version?

Royston

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:34 am

I like audacity, but I use samplitude at home.

samplaire · Post by **samplaire** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:39 am

ProTools free is the best, for me (MacOS9) and I think it's good for =< win98 users.

Fast, intuitive, very good built in processors and tools.

petal · Post by **petal** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:45 am

Am I using the Pro-version - Well I did, but now Cool Edit Pro, has been bought by Adobe and is called Audition - It's the same program though, with the same interface and all, plus a few more things like the Marquee-tool and VST-support etc.

I hear great reports about Sonic Foundry, and know that it is more or less considdered to be the standard among sound-designers, but I have never tried it myself though.

Cheers!
Thomas

[ This Message was edited by: petal on 2005-09-19 04:47 ]

pseudojazzer · Post by **pseudojazzer** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:50 am

Hi Royston, sonic foundry is the way for me - just got sound forge 7 (now owned by sony) and it works treats, but i gotta say i do a lot of wave editing in sx3, there is quite a wide range of editing tools in there as well - as with all these things i think there is much of a muchness between them all - it depends on what you want out of them - and all i can say is that sx and sound forge do all i want and more (i'm sure i've only scratched the surface of all the capabilities of sound forge, but one thing i have done is take both logic and protools files and convert them in sound forge to a format that cubase can deal with - i'm sure you can do this with the other wave editors as well - but thats why for me.)
Cheers,
Tom

[ This Message was edited by: pseudojazzer on 2005-09-19 14:13 ]

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:55 am

Sound Forge here, but it's been getting a bit bloated (4.5 was the ultimate version for sheer speed and slickness for me). Version 8 has some pretty nifty features (graphical automation curves for plugin parameters is the one that stands out for me).

The main thing for me is the interface - I could never understand the way Wavelab works at all (if you select a section of a Wav file and hit play, it should play back the selection only IMHO).

It is pretty resource-hungry though (so is Wavelab). IMHO there's a definite market for a full-featured but slick and fast Wav editor (especially on Mac)... I hope some nice developer steps up to the arena. Audacity looks interesting, but there's too many cool little features I'd miss from SF.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:22 am

I end up using Samplitude the most for sample editing. Looked at all the other ones also, didn't like any of them. I keep a copy of Sound Forge 4.5 for when I work at 44.1/16, as it's pretty stable, small, tight and fast, otherwise I'll just fire up the file in Samplitude.

nprime · Post by **nprime** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 11:09 am

Sony's Sound Forge for me.

...does what it should and has a very intuitve interface.

R

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:29 pm

For somebody trying out so many editors in a single day… well, I am not surprised you didn’t find any for you!

You simply didn’t have the time to like them!

I have to come back, instead of going forward as you need time to truly understand a complex, deep piece of software. I guess that I, as somebody having used Wavelab for more than 5 years already, can tell without mistake this wave editor is a great piece of software, being one of the 3 best in the market. You can do anything you want with it.

I would also recommend SoundForge from Sonic Foundry, it’s a magnificent piece of software also, you can do everything with it too, but it is slower than Wavelab and less intuitive; another good point from SoundForge is that it comes with great plug-ins. If you want to “specialize” in loop creation, well, there everybody knows that SoundForge is the absolute standard in the market, it has been created with this in mind. If you want a general purpose editing software, fast, with a fantastic sounding engine, so you should get Wavelab, as it does everything very well.

I personally would recommend you to get Wavelab, and these are the reasons:

* Wavelab lets you organize your plug-ins in a very easy way; you can create separate folders for them, and move them anytime. As you know, everyday we get more and more plug-ins, if you don’t have a good method to organize them, you just will not use them because everything becomes a mess. It is easy today to have more than 100 DirectX and VST plug-ins installed. There are about 1000 in the net, and many are more than usable, so you better get organized.

* It is fast, you can change plug-ins in seconds and try them IN REAL TIME, which is not bad… In SoundForge, you are forced to try them one by one, while in Wavelab you can try up to 8 at the same time, again, in real time.

* Sound quality is superior.

* It’s simple to get with, straightforward in just a couple of weeks. The included manual is at hand everywhere and quite well explained. Through short readings, you can get all the explanations you need in a few minutes.

* It does good quality outputs in all formats, and it manages many. Support for WAV, AIFF, AU, Ensoniq Paris 24 bit, Sound Designer II, Ulaw, MP3, MP2 (M.U.S.I.C.A.M.), WMA, AVI Audio, Sun/Java etc. Proprietary file format: OSQ for loss-less compression of audio files for archiving.

* Some other wave editors may be apparently deeper or more powerful, but Wavelab simple as it seems to be, can get you to work with multilayer mode, called “Audio Montage”. You can build big projects this way, as if you were working with a sequencer. This is great for cinematic or ambient music.

* Real-time processing with 32-bit Floating Point accuracy

* Save while work: simultaneous saving of multiple audio files in background

* Excellent yet simple way to work with Batch Processing, you can load several plug-Ins, all you have to do is waiting for it to do a perfect job.

* Unlimited Undo-Redo, this is very important when working with great detail.

* Real-time analysis of audio signals: Level / Pan, Phase, 60-band Spectrum Analyzer, FFT-Meter, Wave, Bit-Meter (all with up to eight audio channels), you don’t need to wait to understand what is going on, you can “WATCH IT” in real time!

* CD Burning, which works very well.

* DVD Audio Authoring, allowing you to be at the edge.

I could go on and on talking about it, but the best way would be to work for a while with real music, forgetting about the software and concentrating in the music, there you’ll realize you’ve got a new friend.

I have to say that in no way I have a doubt about suggesting you this very software, as I know, as an experienced user, that you’ll have a great relationship with such a fantastic editor, after about a month, you’ll never touch anything else to do all your editing, and you’ll never want to change it for anything else. Great things are addictive!

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:07 pm

cooledit all the way for me. Just got used to the interface I guess. I HATE peak on the mac.

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:35 am

Nestor wrote:
For somebody trying out so many editors in a single day… well, I am not surprised you didn’t find any for you! You simply didn’t have the time to like them!
(snip)

That's true Nestor, but I've used (and written) so much software now that I can get at least an impression of my feelings for them quite quickly. I set myself quite a simple task to perform with each of them and wanted to see how closely the software matched my own expectations of what the UI should offer.

I started using Tiny Wave Editor when I still had the SW1000XG soundcard (pre-Pulsar days!) I found that I could use it straight away without any problems...it matched the way I thought a wave editor should work.

Thanks everyone for all your input

Royston

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:12 pm

I understand your point sure, no pro!

_________________
*MUSIC* The most Powerful Language in the world! *INDEED*______

[ This Message was edited by: Nestor on 2005-09-20 21:12 ]

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:20 am

I use samplitude because of the virtual functionality and the complete undo. The simple made cut and fade options and the built in effects.

But see for yourself:

http://www.samplitude.com/de/v8_demo.htm

_________________
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[ This Message was edited by: Zer on 2005-09-21 04:23 ]